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| By Katelyn Gendron-List Staff Writer WESTFIELD The internationally critically acclaimed jazz guitarist Jim Robitaille will be stopping in Western Massachusetts this month to play a free concert with his group the Jim Robitaille Trio. The Westfield Athenaeum will be sponsoring the concert on June 27, at 7 p.m. at the Rand Art Museum. The concert is supported by a grant that Robitaille received from the Westfield Arts Council in conjunction with the Massachusetts Cultural Council. "I always like to go and play in Western Massachusetts," Robitaille said. "I like to bring the music to new audiences and play outside of my region." Not only is Robitaille excited to play this concert in Western Massachusetts but Chris Lopes, upright bass guitar for the Jim Robitaille Trio is also enthused about the upcoming performance. "Jazz in a lot of ways is an urban phenomenon and people think that they have to go to a big city to hear this music," Lopes said. "But what I cherish is going to play in a more rural community and bringing the music to them." The third and final member of the trio, Chris Poudrier who plays the drums, is also pleased to have the opportunity to come back and play in Westfield where he attended his first year of college. Proudrier attended Westfield State College his freshman year and later went on to the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "I love the area and I can't wait to perform in Westfield," said Poudrier. According to Robitaille and Lopes the interaction between the musicians during the performance is also a phenomenon within itself as each player brings their own individual sound and improvisation to the concert. "We show up without much of an agenda because the way we play our tunes is improvisational," Robitaille said. "But we can pretty much play anything together collectively. It's like a three-way conversation." When asked about the smooth combination of their collective rhythms as a trio group Lopes said, "I think that the interplay between our personalities goes pretty deep. Especially at a time when communication between people gets lost because there is so much technology blocking human interaction today." However human interaction does not seem to be a problem for any member of this trio as they are all fulltime musicians that supplement their income with professorships in Massachusetts, rather than the other way around, according to Robitaille. Lopes is a professor at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and teaches at the Music School of the Rhode Island Philharmonic. Robitaille has also been teaching at UMass Dartmouth for three years. He teaches applied jazz guitar and has been seriously studying music since he was 12 years old. "My immediate family wasn't musical," Robitaille said. "I really started to get into the guitar when I was 12 and then I knew that's what I wanted to be doing. You don't usually ask yourself twice." Poudrier is also a professor at UMass Dartmouth, in addition to teaching at Berklee College during Percussion Festival Week. When they have not been teaching this group of musicians has been performing on and off together in various collaborations for over 10 years, Robitaille stated. "We've developed a really good relationship with one another because we've come up together and matured," Poudrier said. "We've got hours and hours of practice time and gigs together. Our concerts are not thrown together like most concerts these days," he added. Robitaille went on to add that he is always impressed at how well the music has been accepted by audiences. "I am always surprised by the audiences with how well they receive the music because jazz is considered a minority kind of music," Robitaille said. "And I've played in a lot of small art museums with small audiences and it's great." For Robitaille the primary objective in any concert is to get people interested in the type of improvised jazz that his groups is playing, especially if members of the audience have never heard jazz before. "Even though the music that we are playing is coming out of the jazz tradition we do a lot of our own composition and we like to include a lot of world influences," Robitaille said. "The main thing is that they are interested in improvisational music." For more information call the Westfield Athenaeum at 568-7833. |